Weekly Science Picks

Markus — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 12:42:52 +0000

Well, it’s my turn to pick my favourite science news this week on Australian Science. And I must apologise for being slightly late with this. The reason is that I’ve only just got home to Tokyo after spending all week in Taipei for a conference on interstellar dust! As with any good conference, it’s been fun and fascinating but also rather tiring. If anyone’s curious to know more about what went on, the twitter hashtag #lcod2013 is where myself and others were giving internet commentary over the past week.

Also, between talks, twitter is where I heard most of this week’s worldwide science happenings. So here are a few of the things which caught my eye…

Firstly, Katie Mack (a long term inspiration to me) wrote an article for The Research Whisperer on the perils of the academic lifestyle and being a science nomad – and how that affects your personal life. Being still very recently relocated to Japan myself, this strikes something of a chord with me. It’s worth reading for anyone considering a science career themselves. while I personally rather enjoy the nomadic nature of this job, it’s certainly not for everyone. And I have yet to see how I feel about it a couple more years down the line…

Academic scattering

As for me, I confess I haven’t figured it out. I have two years left on my contract in Australia and no idea whatsoever which country I’ll end up in next. I’m applying broadly, and there’s no guarantee I’ll have a choice about location if I want to stay on the path toward becoming tenure-track faculty at a major research institution. When it’s not unusual for a single postdoc job to have 300 applicants, and faculty jobs are even more selective, getting even one offer is considered a huge win.

Moving on to life of a different kind, a brand new species has been discovered in the waters off the coast of California. And anyone who’s been reading my articles awhile will know how exciting I find the discovery of new species! This time around, it’s a somewhat scary looking new species of crustacean. Don’t worry though. It only eats copepods.

New Alien-like Crustacean Species Identified in California Waters

The frail crustacean, which is only a few millimeters in length, was discovered by scientists from the University of Seville in Spain and the Museum of Natural History in Canada, who had published a taxonomic description of the new species in the journal Zootaxa.

Meanwhile in space… When people talk of space stations and lasers, a lot of us will immediately think of Star Wars. Or whatever other sci fi we might prefer. However, up in orbit around Earth, our own space station is preparing to use lasers for a rather less destructive purpose – to transmit video back to use down here on the ground.

Pew! Pew! Laser On The Space Station Will Beam Video To Earth

“Optical communications (also referred to as ‘lasercomm’) is an emerging technology wherein data is modulated onto laser beams, which offers the promise of much higher data rates than what is achievable with radio-frequency (RF) transmissions.

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-11-24 12:42:52). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-55/
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2013 looks like being the year of the comet

Alan Kerlin — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 00:28:07 +0000

Comet Lovejoy, taken by astronaut Dan Burbankfrom the ISS

The astronomy world has been buzzing since it was announced on 24 September – C/2012 S1 is a new comet that could be lighting up our skies like none in living history by November 2013. It’s been named Comet ISON after the telescope research network used to discover it – the International Science Optical Network, using its 16″ telescope in Russia.

It has since been confirmed, using one of the scopes from the public subscription-based telescope network iTelescope.

With a trajectory taking it very close to the Sun, people are predicting that it could be bright enough to be visible in daylight, like Venus. Ernesto Guido, Giovanni Sostero & Nick Howes advised on the blog for the Associazione Fruiulana di Astronomia e Meteorologia that it will pass within 0.012AU of the Sun – with one AU being the distance of Earth from the Sun – at the end of November and about 0.4AU from Earth in early January 2014. That’s about 1.8 million kilometres from the Sun.

They predict it will become a naked-eye object from early November, and peak in negative magnitudes between 25 November and 3 December, with the brightest a whopping -10.6. Given the visual flop that was the last Haley’s Comet visit, they urge caution with these calculations. But calculations by others appear to confirm that it will likely be very bright.

In 2007, Comet McNaught (named after its discoverer Aussie Rob McNaught) peaked at -5.5.

A quick backgrounder on apparent magnitudes: this scale was formed in the Northern Hemisphere by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus some 2000 years ago. He thought that the star Vega was the brightest there was, and assigned it a magnitude of zero. There’s a lot of history and jiggery-pokery behind it (covered well on Wikipedia), but in a logarithmic scale, each five steps in magnitude equates to 100 times in brightness. So a Mag 5 star is 1% the brightness of Vega.

But then people travelled to the Southern Hemisphere and discovered the much brighter star Sirius. Let’s not forget the planets and the Moon. So instead of tossing the 2000 year old busted system out, they just took it into the negatives. So Sirius is -1, Venus at its maximum (which we are approaching now) is -5, the full Moon -13 and the Sun -27. The ISS is maximum -6 and is regularly (in this area anyway) -3.3.

Of course, C/2012 S1 could actually disintegrate if it gets too close to the Sun. Comet Lovejoy C/2011 W3 almost suffered such a fate, actually cutting through the Sun’s corona on 16 December 2011. But somehow it emerged intact and put on a magnificent display of about -4 for us in the Southern Hemisphere – if we were prepared to get up early in the mornings.

There’ll be another comet in our skies before then – C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) will swing by in March and is predicted to have a magnitude in between 0 and 1.

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comet – Australian Science

Weekly Science Picks

Academic scattering

New Alien-like Crustacean Species Identified in California Waters

Pew! Pew! Laser On The Space Station Will Beam Video To Earth

2013 looks like being the year of the comet